Drive down Woodward Avenue and it's pretty likely
you're utilizing the dominant form of transportation for that
thoroughfare. At least for now.
The long-time car-dominant
corridor makes its intentions known when you first hit McNichols Avenue
heading north. The combination of small buildings and a big boulevard
subconsciously speeds up traffic on the avenue at the expense of
everything else. The thinking behind that paradigm is changing as local
leaders work to turn Woodward into a transit-inclusive corridor.
That means making the thoroughfare friendly to all forms
of transportation, like pedestrians, bicyclists, trains and automobiles.
It also means building density and economic opportunity along
Michigan's Main Street. The belief is that by making Woodward less
car-dominant it can grow into one of Metro Detroit's primary economic
engines.
"The time has come," says Heather Carmona, executive
director of the Woodward
Avenue Action Association, a non-profit that advocates for the
avenue. "The irony is decades ago Woodward was a
transportation-inclusive corridor, but it lost that with the rise of the
automotive industry. However, it's coming back full circle."
Pedestrians,
trains, bikes and automobiles
The unfortunate conventional
wisdom of the last couple of generations is that Woodward only has
enough room for automotive traffic; in other words, cars, trucks and
buses. (Although it's not hard to find a motorist who believes life
would be better for everyone on the boulevard without the buses.)
"They're
worried more about the capacity of Woodward," says Chris Frey, board
president of Transportation
Riders United, a local mass transit advocacy non-profit. "They
should have worried about mobility."
The truth is there is enough
room on Woodward for everyone, especially on its upper reaches, north
of McNichols where the boulevard begins. Room for cars, buses, trains,
bikes, pedestrians and probably even a few jogging strollers.
Incorporating space for them is much easier than people think. The M-1
is eight lanes of traffic, two lanes of parking and a wide boulevard of
green space dividing the two.
"It gives everybody options," says Frey, who also lives
in a high-rise in Midtown Detroit that overlooks Woodward. "It doesn't
favor one type of person over another or one type of transportation over
another. It makes everyone use the resource more efficiently."
Frey,
who uses the bus or his bike for a vast majority of his traveling,
makes the point that people are generally chained to their cars in Metro
Detroit, even along its densest corridor. However, adding options like
light rail down the boulevard median (as it had originally) and bike
lanes along the roadside allows people to travel without worrying about
where to park or the congestion of rush-hour traffic. Not to mention,
more transportation options mean more trips and more vibrancy with fewer
cars.
Todd Scott is the Detroit Greenways Coordinator for the Michigan Trails
and Greenways Alliance, an advocacy group for alternative transit
pathways like trails and bike lanes. The Royal Oak resident takes pride
in reminding people that bicyclists are entitled to the same respect and
rights as motorists. But what would you expect to hear from a bicycle
commuter?
"There is a sense of entitlement, that these cars are
entitled to the road," Scott says. "Bicycles were on Woodward before
cars were invented. It's not like we're the new kids on the block."
Scott
isn't the only person emphasizing that idea. U.S. Secretary of
Transportation Ray LaHood recently announced
the "end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of
non-motorized." That's a game-changing policy shift when it comes to
federal transportation funding.
Adding bike lanes/racks and light
rail, along with more pedestrian amenities (crosswalks, bump outs,
bigger sidewalks), will calm motorized traffic. That makes the boulevard's more vibrant blocks, like
downtown Ferndale (9 Mile Road and Woodward), accessible to those who
want to frequent their businesses. More people means profitable
businesses, density, demand, infill development and more of the good
things for which urbanists yearn.
"I would like to see it as a
dense, vibrant corridor that supports all forms of transportation," Frey
says. "Cars will still be part of the mix, but not the dominant part of
the mix."
Metro Detroit's economic engine
Woodward
isn't just about transportation in the 21st Century. It's about
economics, too. Michigan's Main Street promises to serve as one of the
state's most powerful economic engines if local leaders play their
land-use-planning cards right.
"Woodward was functionally
replaced by the Lodge Freeways and I-75 decades ago," Frey says.
Yes,
Woodward still hosts a number of commuters during rush hour, but
motorists flood onto the avenue when one of the major freeways clogs up.
They don't herd onto the freeway when Woodward gets congested.
That
doesn't make Woodward obsolete. Actually, it gives it an opportunity to recreate itself
as something much more important - the home to intense economic
activity, like a Metro Airport or a research university. Six of Metro
Detroit's most vibrant downtowns are located along Woodward, not to
mention three of its major sports stadiums, one of Michigan's top three
research universities, and a host of other major corporations and
institutions.
"Woodward is the spine," says Mike Whitty, a
business professor at the University of Detroit Mercy. "It's
the connector to Pontiac and the Detroit River. It's a potential point
for unity and density. If you had comprehensive transit you could
repopulate the Woodward corridor."
He adds that that type of
development is much more inline with the urban investment patterns of
the 21st Century. As more future development dollars are directed toward
Metro Detroit's urban core, such as the Woodward corridor, less is
spent turning cornfields into strip malls and moving Oakland County to
Livingston County.
"Sprawl does as much damage (to the region)
as severe poverty and crime," Whitty says.
It's amazing what
dense economic development can do to shrink a major corridor. The seven
lanes of traffic on lower Woodward are much easier to cross than the
eight lanes of upper Woodward (median and all) because of the tall
buildings that flank the streets of downtown Detroit. Buildings that are as tall (or taller) as the width of the
road create an urban canyon that shrinks the street in the eyes of the
people on it, making it more pedestrian friendly.
The opposite is
true on upper Woodward, where the buildings are small (a story or two
at most on average) and the road is wider. That makes crossing Woodward
on foot (or wheels) harder than it has to be, even in
pedestrian-friendly places like downtown Ferndale and Birmingham.
The
Woodward Avenue Action Association is fixing the situation, awarding
tens of thousands of dollars in grant money to create crosswalks,
sidewalk bump-outs, and new lighting. The idea is that making these
places more urban and active-transit friendly makes them better places
to do business, which creates a multiplier effect of economic investment
centered around transit-oriented development.
"It's so critical
for land use and sustaining tax base," Carmona says. "You need to look
at long-term impacts of uses instead of building big-box development
that might be obsolete in 10 years."
Jon
Zemke is the news editor for Metromode and Concentrate.
His wife thinks he's an angel.
His previous article was The
Making Of An Angel.
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